Shadows Of Shallowbrooke - Singing Of Crows.

The Harvest.

There is nothing quite as unsettling as being lost. It's an oppressive feeling where the world seems to stare down from the sky, maliciously following your sad progress like a child with a magnifying glass. For Lucile Bradle, it was her first encounter with Hell on Earth.

She was sixteen years old, bright and pretty in a way which kept we harassed by the somewhat younger boys. She was the sweet one who knew all about being polite, working hard and occasionally brought home a wounded animal she had found on the road. In other words, she was the girl everyone loved just slightly more than the other brats around the village.

Each year of the harvest, which was around mid-summer in Cardenholme, the village of Shallowbrooke organised a small feast. It was especially looked forward to by the young ones, as it wasn't the kind where adults ended up drinking themselves senseless; falling asleep in their food whilst the maid and farmhand snuck off into the first. It was a pleasant evening where the children could stay up for as long as they wished; join in on barn dancing, games and play until dawn slowly drenched the world in light.
The day after the harvest however, a hunt was put together for good sport. Not many in the village had access to either pistols or rifles as Shallowbrooke was remote and depended on other sources of income than game. But there were a few, and those who owned them were the proudest folk in the village. Lucile, of course, had never been one for hunting. But in the dying hours of the day, as the sun drenched the thick crowns of trees in its feverish red light, the thought of riding through the woods with the warm summer breeze in her hair and the smell of nature in her nose just couldn't be resisted.

Shallowbrooke has its secrets, however. It is a homey township with few outsiders, secluded and ever unchanging in its silent slumber. It flows fresh green in the summer, buzzing with life and laughter as the farmers toil on the generous fields. In fall the trees bright gold leaves cast their dying radiance across the woodlands, and the brook snakes its way through the underbrush, casting prisms of reflected light as it sparkles in the sun. The people here live, love and work together. Everyone knows their neighbour and gossip in good humour about the new baby or the blacksmiths beautiful daughter. It's an idyllic life if isolation timelessly rolls by in sweat, smiles and love.

But no one gossips about the caravan which never arrived or the hunters who travelled into the woods and never returned. As darkness rolls over the land, strange cries can be heard from the depths of the surrounding forest, cries that definitely do not belong to wolves or owls. No one comments, no one asks. In unspoken consent the villagers fearfully and, to outsiders, oddly ignore all these sinister predicaments. But why wouldn't they? After all, everyone ignores the grass they walk upon as well, and no one comments why the clouds in the sky are as white or as grey as they are. It's the way the world works, and there is no reason to interfere in what you cannot change.